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Theadora Van Runkle, Costume Designer, Dies at 83

Theadora Van Runkle, a self-taught costume designer who earned an Oscar nomination for her first picture, “Bonnie and Clyde,” and whose signature outfit for Faye Dunaway’s Bonnie Parker — beret, calf-length skirt and sweater — ignited a fashion trend on the film’s release in 1967, died on Friday in Los Angeles. She was 83.

The cause was lung cancer, her son, Max Van Runkle, said.

A commercial artist who fell into costuming by chance, Ms. Van Runkle was known for designs that combined Hollywood glamour with historical fealty.

Over three decades she dressed some of the screen’s best-known stars, including Julie Andrews and William Holden in “S.O.B.” (1981), Steve McQueen in “Bullitt“ (1968) and Liza Minnelli and Robert De Niro in “New York, New York” (1977).

Ms. Van Runkle’s work was associated in particular with Ms. Dunaway, whom she also costumed in “The Thomas Crown Affair” (1968; miniskirts this time) and “The Arrangement” (1969).

The daughter of Eltsey Adair and Courtney Schweppe, a son of the Schweppes carbonated-drink family, Dorothy Schweppe was born in Pittsburgh on March 27, 1928. Her parents, who were unmarried, did not stay together, and as an infant Dorothy moved to California with her mother.

Photo

Theadora Van Runkle at the St. Regis in 1968.Credit
Robert Walker/The New York Times

She began calling herself Theadora in her early 20s, and as a young woman was a department-store fashion illustrator. In the 1960s she worked briefly as a sketch artist for Dorothy Jeakins, an Oscar-winning Hollywood costume designer.

Ms. Jeakins let her go after only a month (artistic envy may have been involved, Ms. Van Runkle said in interviews afterward), but later telephoned with an offer of work.

“I’ve just been asked to do a little western over at Warner Brothers,” Ms. Jeakins told her, “and I recommended you.” The “little western” was “Bonnie and Clyde.”

Ms. Van Runkle was terrified, she later recalled, for she had never designed a costume. But she liked history and she liked to sew, and both stood her in good stead.

Many of Clyde’s suits in the film — chalk-striped, double-breasted 1930s numbers — she took from an archival image of Pretty Boy Floyd.

For Bonnie, Ms. Van Runkle created outfits that were fluid, looked as though they could be packed fast should the wearer need to go on the lam, and were suffused with tomboy sexuality. But because they were deliberately unfancy, they required a bit of a sales job.

She won an Emmy Award in 1983 for her work on the CBS fantasy series “Wizards and Warriors.”

Ms. Van Runkle’s first marriage, to Robert Van Runkle, ended in divorce, as did her second, to Bruce McBroom. A resident of Los Angeles, she is survived by two children from her first marriage, Max and Felicity Van Runkle; and a grandson.

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Had Ms. Van Runkle heeded the advice of Hollywood’s grande dame of design, her work on “Bonnie and Clyde” might have been forgotten long ago.

As she later recounted, she was shopping nervously for the film in Beverly Hills when she ran into Edith Head, costumer to the stars and holder of a spate of Oscars.

“She said, ‘What are you doing?’ ” Ms. Van Runkle recalled.

“I said, ‘It’s the ’30s and they’re escaping from a bank robbery.’ ”

“She said: ‘Oh darling, do everything in chiffon. You’ll have no problems.’ ”

A version of this article appears in print on November 8, 2011, on Page B19 of the New York edition with the headline: Theadora Van Runkle, Costume Designer, Is Dead at 83. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe